This Biologist Is Engineering a Petunia You Can Paint Like a Canvas
How to Design Flowers
Plant biologist Nick Desnoyer is building Paintunia, a petunia engineered with an inducible gene: brush its buds with dexamethasone and the cells switch on pigment production, turning the flower into a living canvas. He plans to add cyan, magenta, and yellow pathways so the blooms can mix the full spectrum, and he dreams of a botanical garden filled with flowers that exist nowhere else.
I would like to create a botanical garden that you walk into and you don't just appreciate the flowers, but you actually understand them a bit deeper through a scientific lens.